02:33 - VIGJust sayin' I remember nikarg's Sodom review on the front page, that album was like 30 years old

02:27 - ScreamingSteelUSTechnically, Che's Manunkind review was too old to be featured on the front page. That was a special exception; usually, we prefer to keep our reviews within three-to-four months, with six months as an absolute cutoff.

02:14 - VIG@Radu Of course! I don't think it's too old to be featured on the front page. Look at Che's Manunkind review

00:09 - RaduPPublished a review for an album that's a bit too old to be featured on the front page, but you guys will read it, right? [link]

From the ashes of Mortem, a death metal band, were born Arcturus, a band that would become in the forthcoming years a star to be followed, yet impossible to be reached. After the release of the 7" "My Angel" and the mini-cd "Constellation" and some changes in their line-up Arcturus reach 1995. Their line-up? Ulver's Garm on the vocals and Skoll on the bass, Mayhem's Hellhammer on the drumming, Sverd on the astral symphonies and Carl August Tidemann on the guitars. This is the year of their magnificent debut album "Aspera Hiems Symfonia".

Everyone in the band show their abilities! Garm whether he howls with his eerie voice like a wolf in the snowy landscape or chants is magnificent and quite expressive, Hellhammer's playing is wonderful and paces with the whole album in both up, mid and low tempo moments, Sverd paints the soundscape with his astral symphonies and evokes a unique dark atmosphere at moments, epic at others, August's guitars are not in the front of the production since the compositions are based on the keyboard melodies, the drumming and the vocals but they lend something unique to the whole atmosphere of the album (the solos are really beautiful) and finally Skoll's bass lines lend groove to the compositions with their nocturnal pulse.

"Aspera Heims Symfonia" is not a common black metal release, but a monument filled with dark aesthetic, bringing forth the melancholy of the Norwegian landscapes and forests where the frost and solitude rule, combined with the fury of Black Metal. The "wintry grey" is always present while listening to the album and slowly you lose yourself under the Norwegian sky and the shining Aurora Borealis staring at the Universe, feeling free "…to reach the stars"! Are you ready for a journey to the stars…?

"To thou who Dwellest in the Night" begins "Aspera Hiems Symfonia", a complex composition filled with both low and up tempo moments evoking various different emotions to the atmosphere, moments with synth-born melodies where you lose yourself in a world of dreams and others filled with black metal outbursts! Garm's expressive chants begin the following composition, Winty Grey while the flaming guitar riffs accompany him! A composition filled with a melancholic imposing atmosphere "through the woods where winter lays…"

"Whence and Whither Goest the Wind" continues the album, a composition filled with superb symphonies evoking a strange melancholic feeling along with the melancholic lyrics of wisdom lost and the vocals that have been recorded backwards. "Rødt og Svart" follows and haunts the listener with its nightmarish atmosphere with Garm filling the atmosphere with his howls and beautiful chants. And the nightmare continues with "The Bodkin & the Quietus (...to Reach the Stars)", filled with haunting keyboard melodies and eerie screams by Garm himself.

And the album continues with the filled with atmosphere and expression magnificent "Du Nordavind" and follows "Fall of Man", another composition where the symphonies rule and evoke a devout feeing in the air. All the shows have an end, whether we like or not, and the ending theme of "Aspera Hiems Symfonia" is "Naar Kulda Tar (Frostnettenes Prolog)" ending the album in an appropriate way filled with imposing symphonies!

The curtain falls and the ending speech belongs to Arcturus, the dramatic personas:
"All music & words on Aspera Hiems Symfonia emanated from our souls profoundly."

Comments

10/10. That's my rate for this album.. absolutly perfect, one of my chosen masterpieces! Every track has its own singularity perfection, an excellent album that led me into this amazing band called Arcturus.

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----member of the true crusade against old school heavy metal, early 80s thrash, NWOBHM, traditional doom, first and second wave black metal, old school death metal, US power metal, 70s prog rock and atmospheric doomsludgestoner. o/

1th - best think happened many Norge demo bands drop dead metal and created something new

Quote:"Aspera Heims Symfonia" is not a common black metal release, but a monument filled with dark aesthetic, bringing forth the melancholy of the Norwegian landscapes and forests where the frost and solitude rule, combined with the fury of Black Metal. The "wintry grey" is always present while listening to the album and slowly you lose yourself under the Norwegian sky and the shining Aurora Borealis staring at the Universe, feeling free "…to reach the stars"! Are you ready for a journey to the stars…?

This is TrOO meaning of black metal and St. Ann is nothing to do whit BM(Yes church of St. Ann, we all are Catholics here) , I have been saying it years, funny DerRoz said it non makes a fun, I says all makes fun... true BM is nature, winter, cold, solitude, and so on, thins what was part of ordinary pre I net, cell phone era. And don't give me that in London , Paris or Atenas has winter, this band understood it and maybe that's why there are few never dying albums, and many demo, one album bands what even MA don't remember.
Bm bands are musicians, musicians are people and they have influences, few cases those are better and above the ordinary and it creates great music.

Mid January, cold winter winds - 20¤c, strong craft beer, carbine in a deep forest, cold winter wind, fire wood, you can enjoy aurora borealis . it is journey to the stars if you have an album booklet in your hands.

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Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing